The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II

by David G. Hartwell

  “So then: the situation. We have verified that there are only four passways to Home. These four passways are closed, though we must accept Bob’s word in regard to your downtown locker. If this is truly the case, if Elizabeth and the girls are still on Home, you will never see them again.”

  “Bob is mixed up in this business. I could swear to nothing, but – ”

  Alan Robertson held up his hand. “I will talk to Bob; this is the obvious first step.” He rose to his feet and went to the telephone in the corner of the lounge. Duray joined him. Alan spoke into the screen. “Get me Robert Robertson’s apartment in San Francisco.”

  The screen glowed white. Bob’s voice came from the speaker. “Sorry, I’m not at home. I have gone out to my world Fancy, and I cannot be reached. Call back in a week, unless your business is urgent, in which case call back in a month.”

  “Mmph,” said Alan Robertson, returning to his seat. “Bob is sometimes a trifle too flippant. A man with an under-extended intellect . . .” He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Tomorrow night is his party? What does he call it? A Rumfuddle?”

  “Some such nonsense. Why does he want me? I’m a dead dog; I’d rather be home building a fence.”

  “Perhaps you had better plan to attend the party.”

  “That means, submit to his extortion.”

  “Do you want to see your wife and family again?”

  “Naturally. But whatever he has in mind won’t be for my benefit, or Elizabeth’s.”

  “You’re probably right there. I’ve heard one or two unsavory tales regarding the Rumfuddlers . . . The fact remains that the passways are closed. All four of them.”

  Duray’s voice became harsh. “Can’t you open a new orifice for us?”

  Alan Robertson gave his head a sad shake. “I can tune the machine very finely. I can code accurately for the ‘Home’ class of worlds and as closely as necessary approximate a particular world-state. But at each setting, no matter how fine the tuning, we encounter an infinite number of worlds. In practice, inaccuracies in the machine, backlash, the gross size of electrons, the very difference between one electron and another, make it difficult to tune with absolute precision. So even if we tuned exactly to the ‘Home’ class, the probability of opening into your particular Home is one of an infinite number: in short, negligible.”

  Duray stared off across the chamber. “Is it possible that space once entered might tend to open more easily a second time?”

  Alan Robertson smiled. “As to that, I can’t say. I suspect not, but I really know so little. I see no reason why it should be so.”

  “If we can open into a world precisely cognate, I can at least learn why the passways are closed.”

  Alan Robertson sat up in his chair. “Here is a valid point. Perhaps we can accomplish something in this regard.” He glanced humorously sidewise at Duray. “On the other hand – consider this situation. We create access into a ‘Home’ almost exactly cognate to your own – so nearly identical that the difference is not readily apparent. You find there an Elizabeth, a Dolly, a Joan, and an Ellen indistinguishable from your own, and a Gilbert marooned on Earth. You might even convince yourself that this is your very own Home.”

  “I’d know the difference,” said Duray shortly, but Alan Robertson seemed not to hear.

  “Think of it! An infinite number of Homes isolated from Earth, an infinite number of Elizabeths, Dollys, Joans, and Ellens marooned, an infinite number of Gilbert Durays trying to regain access . . . The sum effect might be a wholesale reshuffling of families, with everyone more or less good-natured about the situation. I wonder if this could be Bob’s idea of a joke to share with his Rumfuddlers.”

  Duray looked sharply at Alan Robertson, wondering whether the man was serious. “It doesn’t sound funny and I wouldn’t be very good-natured.”

  “Of course not,” said Alan Robertson hastily. “An afterthought – in rather poor taste, I’m afraid.”

  “In any event, Bob hinted that Elizabeth would be at the damned Rumfuddle. If that’s the case, she must have closed the passways from this side.”

  “A possibility,” Alan Robertson conceded, “but unreasonable. Why should she seal you away from Home?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”

  Alan Robertson slapped his hands down upon his shanks and jumped to his feet, only to pause once more. “You’re sure you want to look into these cognates? You might see things you wouldn’t like.”

  “So long as I know the truth, I don’t care whether I like it or not.”

  “So be it.”

  The machine occupied a room behind the balcony. Alan Robertson surveyed the device with pride and affection. “This is the fourth model, and probably optimum; at least I don’t see any place for significant improvement. I use a hundred and sixty-seven rods converging upon the center of the reactor sphere. Each rod produces a quotum of energy and is susceptible to several types of adjustment to cope with the very large number of possible states. The number of particles to pack the universe full is on the order of ten raised to the power of sixty; the possible permutations these particles would number is two raised to the power of ten raised to the power of sixty. The universe, of course, is built of many different particles, which makes the final number of possible, or let us say, thinkable states a number like two raised to the power often raised to the power of sixty, all times x, where x is the number of particles under consideration. A large, unmanageable number, which we need not consider, because the conditions we deal with – the possible variations of planet Earth – are far fewer.”

  “Still a very large number,” said Duray.

  “Indeed yes. But again the sheer unmanageable bulk is swept away by a self-normalizing property of the machine. In what I call floating neutral, the machine reaches the closest cognate – which is to say, that infinite class of perfect cognates. In practice, because of infinitesimal inaccuracies, ‘floating neutral’ reaches cognates more or less imperfect, perhaps by no more than the shape of a single grain of sand. Still, ‘floating neutral’ provides a natural base, and by adjusting the controls, we reach cycles at an ever greater departure from base. In practice I search out a good cycle and strike a large number of passways, as many as a hundred thousand. So now to our business.” He went to a porthole at the side. “Your code number, what was it now?”

  Duray brought forth the card and read the numbers: “Four: eight:ten/six:thirteen:twenty-nine.”

  “Very good. I give the code to the computer, which searches the files and automatically adjusts the machine. Now then, step over here; the process releases dangerous radiation.”

  The two stood behind lead slabs. Alan Robertson touched a button; watching through a periscope, Duray saw a spark of purple light and heard a small groaning, gasping sound seeming to come from the air itself.

  Alan Robertson stepped forth and walked to the machine. In the delivery tray rested an extensible ring. He picked up the ring and looked through the hole. “This seems to be right.” He handed the ring to Duray. “Do you see anything you recognize?”

  Duray put the ring to his eye. “That’s Home.”

  “Very good. Do you want me to come with you?”

  Duray considered. “The time is now?”

  “Yes. This is a time-neutral setting.”

  “I think I’ll go alone.”

  Alan Robertson nodded. “Whatever you like. Return as soon as you can, so I’ll know you’re safe.”

  Duray frowned at him sidewise. “Why shouldn’t I be safe? No one is there but my family.”

  “Not your family. The family of a cognate Gilbert Duray. The family may not be absolutely identical. The cognate Duray may not be identical. You can’t be sure exactly what you will find – so be careful.”

  VII

  From Memoirs and Reflections:

  When I think of my machine and my little forays in and out of infinity, an idea keeps recurring to me which is so rather terrible t
hat I close it out of my mind, and I will not even mention it here.

  Duray stepped out upon the soil of Home and stood praising the familiar landscape. A vast meadow drenched in sunlight rolled down to wide Silver River. Above the opposite shore rose a line of low bluffs, with copses of trees in the hollows. To the left, the landscape seemed to extend indefinitely and at last become indistinct in the blue haze of distance. To the right, the Robber Woods ended a quarter mile from where Duray stood. On a flat beside the forest, on the bank of a small stream, stood a house of stone and timber: a sight that seemed to Duray the most beautiful one he had ever seen. Polished glass windows sparkled in the sunlight; banks of geraniums glowed green and red. From the chimney rose a wisp of smoke.

  The air smelled cool and sweet but seemed – so Duray imagined – to carry a strange tang, different – so he imagined – from the meadow-scent of his own Home. Duray started forward, then halted. The world was his own, yet not his own. If he had been conscious of the fact, would he have recognized the strangeness? Nearby rose an outcrop of weathered gray field-rock: a rounded mossy pad on which he had sat only two days before, contemplating the building of a dock. He walked over and looked down at the stone. Here he had sat; here were the impressions of his heels in the soil; here was the pattern of moss from which he had absently scratched a fragment. Duray bent close. The moss was whole. The man who had sat here, the cognate Duray, had not scratched at the moss. So then: The world was perceptibly different from his own.

  Duray was relieved and yet vaguely disturbed. If the world had been the exact simulacrum of his own, he might have been subjected to unmanageable emotions – which still might be the case. He walked toward the house, along the path that led down to the river. He stepped up to the porch. On a deck chair was a book: Down There: A Study of Satanism, by J. K. Huysmans. Elizabeth’s tastes were eclectic. Duray had not previously seen the book; was it perhaps that that Bob Robertson had put through the parcel delivery?

  Duray went into the house. Elizabeth stood across the room. She had evidently watched him coming up the path. She said nothing; her face showed no expression.

  Duray halted, somewhat at a loss as to how to address this familiar-strange woman. “Good afternoon,” he said at last.

  Elizabeth allowed a wisp of a smile to show. “Hello, Gilbert.”

  At least, thought Duray, on cognate worlds the same language was spoken. He studied Elizabeth. Lacking prior knowledge, would he have perceived her to be someone different from his own Elizabeth? Both were beautiful women: tall and slender, with curling black shoulder-length hair, worn without artifice. Their skin was pale, with a dusky undertone; their mouths were wide, passionate, stubborn. Duray knew his Elizabeth to be a woman of explicable moods, and this Elizabeth was doubtless no different – yet somehow a difference existed that Duray could not define, deriving perhaps from the strangeness of her atoms, the stuff of a different universe. He wondered if she sensed the same difference in him.

  He asked, “Did you close off the passways?”

  Elizabeth nodded, without change of expression.

  “Why?”

  “I thought it the best thing to do,” said Elizabeth in a soft voice.

  “That’s no answer.”

  “I suppose not. How did you get here?”

  “Alan made an opening.”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “I thought that was impossible.”

  “True. This is a different world to my own. Another Gilbert Duray built this house. I’m not your husband.”

  Elizabeth’s mouth dropped in astonishment. She swayed back a step and put her hand up to her neck: a mannerism Duray could not recall in his own Elizabeth. The sense of strangeness came ever more strongly upon him. He felt an intruder. Elizabeth was watching him with a wide-eyed fascination. She said in a hurried mutter: “I wish you’d leave, go back to your own world; do!”

  “If you’ve closed off all the passways, you’ll be isolated,” growled Duray. “Marooned, probably forever.”

  “Whatever I do,” said Elizabeth, “it’s not your affair.”

  “It is my affair, if only for the sake of the girls. I won’t allow them to live and die alone out here.”

  “The girls aren’t here,” said Elizabeth in a flat voice. “They are where neither you nor any other Gilbert Duray will find them. So now go back to your own world, and leave me in whatever peace my soul allows me.”

  Duray stood glowering at the fiercely beautiful woman. He had never heard his own Elizabeth speak so wildly. He wondered if on his own world another Gilbert Duray similarly confronted his own Elizabeth, and as he analyzed his feelings toward this woman before him, he felt a throb of annoyance. A curious situation. He said in a quiet voice, “Very well. You and my own Elizabeth have decided to isolate yourselves. I can’t imagine your reasons.”

  Elizabeth gave a wild laugh. “They’re real enough.”

  “They may be real now, but ten years from now or forty years from now they may seem unreal. I can’t give you access to your own Earth, but if you wish, you can use the –

  Elizabeth turned away and went to look out over the passway to the Earth from which I’d just come,

  – and you need never see me again.”

  Duray spoke to her back. “We’ve never had secrets between us, you and I – or I mean, Elizabeth and I. Why now? Are you in love with some other man?”

  Elizabeth gave a snort of sardonic amusement. “Certainly not . . . I’m disgusted with the entire human race.”

  “Which presumably includes me.”

  “It does indeed, and myself as well.”

  “And you won’t tell me why?”

  Elizabeth, still looking out the window, wordlessly shook her head.

  “Very well,” said Duray in a cold voice. “Will you tell me where you’ve sent the girls? They’re mine as much as yours, remember.”

  “These particular girls aren’t yours at all.”

  “That may be, but the effect is the same.”

  Elizabeth said tonelessly: “If you want to find your own particular girls, you’d better find your own particular Elizabeth and ask her. I can only speak for myself . . . To tell you the truth, I don’t like being part of a composite person, and I don’t intend to act like one. I’m just me. You’re you, a stranger, whom I’ve never seen before in my life. So I wish you’d leave.”

  Duray strode from the house, out into the sunlight. He looked once around the wide landscape, then gave his head a surely shake and marched off along the path.

  VIII

  From Memoirs and Reflections:

  The past is exposed for our scrutiny; we can wander the epochs like lords through a garden, serene in our purview. We argue with the noble sages, refuting their laborious concepts, should we be so unkind. Remember (at least) two things. First: The more distant from now, the less precise our conjunctures, the less our ability to strike to any given instant. We can break in upon yesterday at a stipulated second; during the Eocene, plus or minus ten years is the limit of our accuracy; as for the Cretaceous or earlier, an impingement with three hundred years of a given date can be considered satisfactory. Secondly: The past we broach is never our own past but at best the past of a cognate world, so that any illumination cast upon historical problems is questionable and perhaps deceptive. We cannot plumb the future; the process involves a negative flow of energy which is inherently impractical. An instrument constructed of antimatter has been jocularly recommended but would yield no benefit to us. The future, thankfully remains forever shrouded.

  “Aha, you’re back!” exclaimed Alan Robertson. “What did you learn?”

  Duray described the encounter with Elizabeth. “She makes no excuse for what she’s done; she shows hostility, which doesn’t seem real, especially since I can’t imagine a reason for it.”

  Alan Robertson had no comment to make.

  “The woman isn’t my wife, but their motivations must be the same. I can’t think of one sensible explan
ation for conduct so strange, let alone two.”

  “Elizabeth seemed normal this morning?” asked Alan Robertson.

  “I noticed nothing unusual.”

  Alan Robertson went to the control panel of his machine. He looked over his shoulder at Duray. “What time do you leave for work?”

  “About nine.”

  Alan Robertson set one dial and turned two others until a ball of green light balanced, wavering, precisely halfway along a glass tube. He signaled Duray behind the lead slab and touched the button. From the center of the machine came the impact of 167 colliding nodules of force and the groan of rending dimensional fabric.

  Alan Robertson brought forth the new passway. “The time is morning. You’ll have to decide for yourself how to handle the situation. You can try to watch without being seen; you can say that you have paperwork to catch up on, that Elizabeth should ignore you and go about her normal routine, while you unobtrusively see what happens.”

  Duray frowned. “Presumably for each of these worlds there is a Gilbert Duray who finds himself in my fix. Suppose each tries to slip inconspicuously into someone else’s world to learn what is happening. Suppose each Elizabeth catches him in the act and furiously accuses the man she believes to be her husband of spying on her – this in itself might be the source of Elizabeth’s anger.”

  “Well, be as discreet as you can. Presumably you’ll be several hours, so I’ll go back to the boat and putter about. Locker five in my private hub yonder; I’ll leave the door open.”

  Once again Duray stood on the hillside above the river, with the rambling stone house built by still another Gilbert Duray two hundred yards along the slope. From the height of the sun, Duray judged local time to be about nine o’clock – somewhat earlier than necessary. From the chimney of the stone house rose a wisp of smoke; Elizabeth had built a fire in the kitchen fireplace. Duray stood reflecting. This morning in his own house Elizabeth had built no fire. She had been on the point of striking a match and then had decided that the morning was already warm. Duray waited ten minutes, to make sure that the local Gilbert Duray had departed, then set forth toward the house. He paused by the big flat stone to inspect the pattern of moss. The crevice seemed narrower than he remembered, and the moss was dry and discolored. Duray took a deep breath. The air, rich with the odor of grasses and herbs, again seemed to carry an odd, unfamiliar scent. Duray proceeded slowly to the house, uncertain whether, after all, he was engaged in a sensible course of action.